Game Pool

Liao Ke asks, "You were feeling sorry for Bai Liu, but you weren't really sorry, were you?"

The stethoscope hmmm'd.

Liao Ke bowed his head and wrote, "You empathized with Bai Liu."

The stethoscope asks, "What is empathy?"

"Empathy is when the two of you have similar experiences or the other person has a very different and special meaning to you, resulting in the other person's emotions that you can empathize with and experience." Liao Ke writes on her notepad, "Spades , do you know why you are sad because Bai Liu is sad?"

The stethoscope answered honestly, "I don't know."

"You actually lack a basis for empathy, and your experience is so whitewashed that it leads to a complete inability to fantasize about what it would be like for another person to be in that scenario from something you've experienced yourself."

Liao Ke explains, "Most empathy is based on mutual understanding, but that doesn't hold true for you and Bai Liu, you don't know Bai Liu, or for that matter, you don't know anyone, and you don't even understand the mechanism by which human feelings are generated."

"So it's a strange thing to have empathy in you." Liao Ke looks up, "Between what I know about you, I think the only explanation is-"

"You're instinctively feeling Bai Liu's emotions."

"But correspondingly, although you feel it, you don't have the means to process such complex feelings." Liao Ke smiled, "To make an analogy, if Bai Liu's feelings were some kind of special data and you were a computer, the influx of such data would cause you to react in a very strange way before you had the ability to process such special data."

The stethoscope asks, "What's the reaction?"

"In order to process this special data, you will also keep producing special data to respond to the other person." Liao Ke smiles warmly, "Sometimes people will fall in love with the person who loves them and hate the person who hates them, this is a kind of human emotional feedback, you can feel the other person's emotions, and accordingly, you will also produce emotions to deal with the other person's emotions."

"Bai Liu is sad for you, so you'll be sad for Bai Liu."

Liao Ke continued, "But the root of this empathy needs to be found together, which is, Spades of all the individuals around you, why did your instinct, or subconscious mind pick Bai Liu over others to feel the other person's emotions?"

The stethoscope seemed to be thinking, sagging slightly, "Bai Liu ...... is not like the others."

"How is it different from others?" Liao Ke's voice is soft, "That might be a difficult question for Spades to answer, so let's exemplify the recursive relationships around you, Spades, to explore why Bai Liu is different."

"Like the strangers in the play pool, how are they different from Bai Liu to you, and why don't you go ahead and choose to empathize with them?"

The stethoscope was silent for a long time, "These people fear me."

Liao Ke nodded with seeming understanding, "Because these people fear you, there is a natural barrier of empathy between you, and they harbor ill will towards you, so you shield each other accordingly."

"In fact, normally, if Spades were a human being raised in a normal environment, the first reaction to being feared by a massive crowd would have been to be infected as well, subconsciously fearing and loathing himself so as to align himself with the perceptions of the other human beings, to seek out a sense of spiritual identity, and to avoid his isolation from the group."

"People are pack animals and instinctively avoid loneliness, but that's not the case with Spades."

Liao Ke looks to the side of the Reverse God, "Spades should have always existed in a highly ostracized environment, he's used to it so when feared on a mass scale, he'll just feel normal and ignore the other side instead of seeking approval in this group of people who fear him."

"I'd like to ask you Inverse God, do you know anything about the circumstances of Spades' birth?"

The Reverse God silently clasped his hands against the tip of his nose and paused for a moment before speaking, "Spades This guy ...... is from within that single player game login system in the town of Serenity."

"Taville, the last Evil God, became close friends with a human and drifted into the reality of the map of the town of Serenity after being forced to fall asleep and fall."

"Since that time, the New Evil God has allowed Taville to drift from game to game in a dormant state in order to punish it, to be used as a godly wandering NPC to be beaten by players, and to be cut up and made into all sorts of evil instants to create copies of designed games."

"In order to be able to go back to that human again, Taville returned to the town of Siren where he had first drifted into a copy of the game, and cut open his spirit and flesh there while the new Evil God diverted his attention to the search for his heir."

"Taville allowed his soul to be trapped in the game for an eternity of suffering while his physical body morphed into a human form, blending in with a batch of newcomers logging in, and eventually logging in from a dead player's small television."

Liao Ke realized: "When I said that the newcomer's single-player copy of the game had an extra small TV and was blocked from seeing what was on it, was I talking about Spades?"

The Adversary hmmmed, "Spades was born out of Taville's mermaid body, and the game was actually almost through when he was born, even though the player and major NPCs were dead."

"That is to say, the inhabitants of the town of Siren have basically regained their normal consciousness and are normal humans, and they know that their tragedy was caused by the mermaids that were fished up in the first place, aka Taville, which has made them very fearful and repulsed by the Spades that were born out of Taville's shell."

"...... The group of townspeople tried to kill Spades in many ways, fire, knifing, but since this Spades guy's resistance was so high, these things couldn't hurt him at all, and he didn't feel any pain."

The Adversary took a deep breath, "Spades didn't resist from start to finish, or rather, he didn't even understand what was going on, and just calmly let this group of townspeople dispose of him."

"But because the townspeople have been unable to kill Spades, extreme fear has driven the group insane."

"They lined up in front of the Spades, looked twisted and deranged, shouted you monster, and then slit their collective throats and killed themselves."

"And then later on, Spades went from rummaging through the bodies of these people and found the body of the dead player in there, and after taking his system coin, logged into the game covered in blood."

Liao Ke nodded like he understood and turned his head to look at Spades again : "Spades, why don't you choose your teammates as the object of empathy? Teammates don't fear you."

The stethoscope bowed its head as if in serious thought, then replied, "They have no special data on me."

Liao Ke reacted and laughed, "You're using my earlier analogy right? Feelings for you are stats, but your teammates' feelings for you aren't strong enough for you to generate special stats in return."

"That's quite normal." Liao Ke pondered, "It's like strangers between normal human societies, there will be a sense of distance, but your teammates' feelings towards you, Spades, should be a little stronger than strangers, you should be able to feel a little bit of it, and the time spent with you is so much longer than Bai Liu, so why is it that you can't give back to your teammates, but instead, you can give back to Bai Why can't you give back to your teammates and instead give back to Bai Liu?"

The stethoscope was quiet for a moment this time, "Because ...... first time I saw Bai Liu, he smiled at me."

"I feel like he wants me to hug him."

"I feel like he doesn't want me to go away and wants to stay with me forever."

"Other people don't do that, they don't fear me, but they don't want to embrace me and be with me forever either."

"Only Bai Liu would have this kind of special data on me."

Both Liao Ke and the Reverse God were quiet for a moment before Liao Ke continued to speak and asked, "This particular data that Bai Liu is giving you is different from what other people, like with your teammates, give you, isn't it?"

"Uh-huh." The stethoscope answered quickly.

Liao Ke continues, "Can you use anything to compare how this particular data generated by Bai Liu makes you feel?"

The stethoscope paused, "Bai Liu held my wrist the first time he saw me."

"It's warm."

Liao Ke looks down and continues writing on her notepad before looking up at the Adversary, "I'm done with my questions, so I'm sure I don't need to tell you what Spades' mental problems are, do I?"

The Reverse God held his forehead and let out a long, helpless sigh, "Although I guessed it when I was in the game, it's still a bit ...... when it's actually confirmed."

Liao Ke grinned as he stood up and loosened the restraining straps that were helping Spades before he turned and patted the Adversary on the shoulder, "It's complicated isn't it? I felt the same way when my youngest daughter first told me about her crush."

"On one hand, I'm glad she's grown up and has someone she likes." Liao Ke turns to Spades, her eyes smiling, "On the other hand, worried that the fool has fallen for someone bad."

"But the good thing is that it's easy for you to get to know each other." Liao Ke suddenly reaches out and takes hold of the Retro God's small arm and yanks it outward, "I see I'm going to have to counsel not only Spades, but you as well."

The Adversary was caught off guard and hissed as he was pulled, his hands covered in bloody whip marks as Liao Ke pulled them out.

Liao Ke raised his eyes to the Reverse God, "You can lie to Bai Yi when you say you're not injured yourself, but you can't lie to me as a professional, what's up with these whip marks? Why did you bring out your injuries as well?"

The Reverse God gave a start, then drew back his hand and laughed with a slight grumble, "What could have happened? Spades this asshole suddenly went crazy when he was about to log out of the game and whipped me with a broken whip, hitting me so hard that I was caught off guard and didn't react before taking the injury out of the game with me."

Liao Ke looked steadily at the Adversary, "The wounds on you and the wounds on Spades are a kind of whip marks, both with hooks and spines, and Spades' whips don't look like that."

The Adversary sat on the backrest of the couch, his head bowed without a word, and was quiet for a long, long time.

Drops of blood oozing from the whip marks on his body hit the floor.